Marco Lupis - Interviews From The Short Century стр 4.

A new guide joins us the next morning. His name is Porfirio and he’s also a Mexican Indian.

It takes us nearly seven dust- and pothole-filled hours in his jeep to reach Lacandón, a village where the dirt track ends and the jungle proper begins. It’s not raining, but we're still knee-deep in mud. We sleep in some huts we encounter along our route, and it takes us two exhausting days of brisk walking through the inhospitable jungle before we finally arrive, completely stifled by the humidity, at Giardin. It’s a village in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve that is home to about two hundred people, all of whom are either women, children or old. The men have gone to war. We are made to feel welcome, but few people understand Spanish. Everybody here speaks the Mayan language Tzeltal. “Will we be meeting Marcos?” we ask. “Maybe,” Porfirio nods.

We are woken gently at three in the morning and told that we need to leave. Guided by the light of the stars rather than the moon, we walk for half an hour before we reach a hut. We can just about make out the presence of three men inside, but it's almost as dark as the balaclavas that hide their faces. In the identikit released by the Mexican government, Marcos was described as a professor with a degree in philosophy who wrote a thesis on Althusser and did a master’s at Paris-Sorbonne University. A voice initially speaking French breaks the silence: “We’ve got twenty minutes. I prefer to speak Spanish if that’s OK. I’m Subcomandante Marcos. I'd advise you not to record our conversation, because if the recording should be intercepted it would be a problem for everybody, especially for you. We may officially be in the middle of a ceasefire, but they’re using every trick in the book to try and track me down. You can ask me anything you like.”

Why do you call yourself “Subcomandante”?

Everyone says: “Marcos is the boss”, but that’s not true. They're the real bosses, the Zapatista people; I just happen to have military command. They've appointed me spokesperson because I can speak Spanish. My comrades are communicating through me; I’m just following orders.

Ten years off the grid is a long time. How do you pass the time up here in the mountains?

I read. I brought twelve books with me to the Jungle. One is Canto General by Pablo Neruda, another is Don Quixote .

What else?

Well, the days and years of our struggle go by. If you see the same poverty, the same injustice every single day... If you live here, your desire to fight and make a difference can only get stronger. Unless you’re a cynic or a bastard. And then there are the things that journalists don’t usually ask me. Like, here in the Jungle, we sometimes have to eat rats and drink our comrades’ piss to ensure we don't die of thirst on a long journey...things like that.

What do you miss? What did you leave behind?

I miss sugar. And a dry pair of socks. Having wet feet day and night, in the freezing cold...I wouldn't wish that on anyone. As for sugar, it's just about the only thing the Jungle can't provide. We have to source it from miles away because we need it to keep our strength up. For those of us from the city, it can be torture. We keep saying: “Do you remember the ice creams from Coyoacán? And the tacos from Division del Norte ?” These are all just distant memories. Out here, if you catch a pheasant or some other animal, you have to wait three or four hours before it's ready to eat. And if the troops are so famished they eat it raw, it’s diarrhoea all round the next day. Life's different here; you see everything in a new light... Oh yes, you asked me what I left behind. A metro ticket, a mountain of books, a notebook filled with poems...and a few friends. Not many, just a few.

When will you unmask yourself?

I don't know. I believe that our balaclava is also a positive ideological symbol: this is our revolution...it's not about individuals, there's no leader. With these balaclavas, we're all Marcos.

The government would argue that you’re hiding your face because you’ve got something to hide...

They don't get it. But it’s not even the government that is the real problem; it's more the reactionary forces in Chiapas, the local farmers and landowners with their private “white guards”. I don't think there’s much difference between the racism of a white South African towards a black person and that of a Chiapaneco landowner towards a Mexican Indian. The life expectancy for Mexican Indians here is 50-60 for men and 45-50 for women.

What about children?

Infant mortality is through the roof. Let me tell you the story of Paticha. A while back, as we were moving from one part of the Jungle to another, we happened upon a small, very poor community where we were greeted by a Zapatista comrade who had a little girl aged about three or four. Her name was Patricia, but she pronounced it “Paticha”. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, and her answer was always the same: “a guerrilla”. One night, we found her running a really high temperature – must have been at least forty – and we didn't have any antibiotics. We used some damp cloths to try and cool her down, but she was so hot they just kept drying out. She died in my arms. Patricia never had a birth certificate, and she didn't have a death certificate either. To Mexico, it was as if she never existed. That’s the reality facing Mexican Indians in Chiapas.